Data recorded for leaf size, and leaf vein and areole measurements taken from nine Magnoliaceae species

Across species, the density of major veins in leaves scales inversely with leaf area. Yet, minor vein density manifests no clear relationship with respect to leaf are, despite having the potential to provide important insights into the trade-off between investments in leaf mechanical support, hydraulics, and light interception. To examine this phenomenon, between 120−380 mature leaves from each of nine Magnoliaceae species were sampled from Nanjing Forestry University campus and Nanjing Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China in 2019 and 2020. The leaves were boiled, and the epidermal and mesophyll tissues were removed. The remaining leaf skeleton was stained to obtain a clear leaf venation network. The software LEAF GUI was used to obtain the data of leaf size, leaf vein and areole traits. The large sample size data render it possible to explore the scaling relationships between leaf size and each trait of leaf veins and areoles. This data set includes the information of leaf length, leaf width, leaf area, total vein length, total vein area, mean areole area per leaf, and the number of the areole sizes per leaf of the nine Magnoliaceae species.